.svg){kind=logo} Logo used since 2016 | |
| Type | Public broadcastingfree-to-airtelevision network |
|---|---|
| Country | Canada |
| Broadcast area | Canada (available in northern United States by cable or antenna and Worldwide) |
| Affiliates | List of member stations |
| Headquarters | Montreal,Quebec Quebec City,Quebec |
| Programming | |
| Language(s) | French |
| Picture format | 720pHDTV (downscaled to480i for theSDTV feed) |
| Ownership | |
| Owner | Canadian Broadcasting Corporation |
| History | |
| Launched | 6 September 1952; 72 years ago (1952-09-06) |
| Links | |
| Website | ici |
| Availability | |
| Streaming media | |
| RiverTV | Over-the-top TV |
Ici Radio-Canada Télé (stylized asICI Radio-Canada Télé, and sometimes abbreviated asIci Télé) is aCanadianFrench-languagefree-to-airtelevision network owned by theCanadian Broadcasting Corporation (known in French as Société Radio-Canada [SRC]), the nationalpublic broadcaster. Its English-language counterpart isCBC Television.
Its headquarters are atMaison Radio-Canada inMontreal, which is also home to the network's flagship station,CBFT-DT, as well as themaster control facilities of all of its owned-and-operated stations nationwide. Until the 2012closedown of the CBC / Radio-Canada rebroadcaster network, it was the onlyfrancophone network in Canada to broadcast terrestrially in all Canadian provinces.
This network is considered[according to whom?] more popular than CBC Television. It does not face such intense competition from American networks. Despite this, it has trailedTVA in the ratings for most of the last 30 years, roughly as long as its English counterpart has trailedCTV. Its ratings have improved with offbeatsitcoms, and thetalk showTout le monde en parle. With this success, however, have come accusations ofdumbing down. For instance,Tout le monde en parle replaced the long-running Sunday night arts seriesLes Beaux Dimanches.
News programming is anchored byLe Téléjournal, which airs nightly at 10:00 p.m. Local newscasts, which air during the lunch and supper hours, now also carry theTéléjournal name, i.e.,Le Téléjournal Montréal. The regional newscasts used to be calledCe Soir (This Evening).
All Radio-Canada newscasts are broadcast under the nameLe Téléjournal. The main evening broadcast airs most nights at 10:00 p.m. local time (11:00 p.m. in theMaritimes).Le Téléjournal is also seen live and as a repeat broadcast on a sister cable news channelRDI and on time-delay worldwide via an international francophone channelTV5. There are no morning newscasts. Local and regional news also takes theTéléjournal name followed by the name of a city, region, or province, or by the time of day (for exampleLe TéléjournalMontréal,Le Téléjournal Midi, etc.)CBVT-DTQuebec City,CBLFT-DTToronto andCBOFT-DTOttawa, andCBAFT-DT in theAtlantic provinces run local midday bulletins. In contrast, all affiliates run supper-hour bulletins which run from Monday to Fridays, except forCBVT-DT,CBOFT-DT andCBAFT-DT,[1] which run seven days a week.
Investigative reporting is broadcast weekly asEnquête. In 2008, the program tested the safety levels ofTasers in the wake of concerns raised after a Polish immigrant died after RCMP police officers fired a Taser inVancouver International Airport.[2] Other shows such asDécouverte raised concerns about the safety of overhead bridges in Montreal after thecollapse of a bridge in 2007.
There is also weekly programming on political affairs concerning theNational Assembly of Quebec and theHouse of Commons of Canada withLes coulisses du pouvoir (The Corridors of Power). Science and technology issues are covered inDécouverte and agricultural and rural topics inLa semaine verte. Consumer affairs are covered inL'épicerie andFacture.
From 1952 to 2004, the network was home to weekly French-language broadcasts ofice hockey matches involving theMontreal Canadiens, calledLa Soirée du hockey. The show was discontinued when broadcast rights reverted toRDS. Viewers outside Quebec were able to continue watching games via Radio-Canada stations until 2006 when RDS became exclusive broadcasters. Radio-Canada was also the home of theMontreal Alouettes before moving to RDS. It was also home for many years to French-language television broadcasts of theMontreal Expos.
After briefly losing the rights toV and RDS as part of theCTV/Rogers consortium, CBC/Radio-Canada re-gained rights to theOlympic Games in 2014, with Radio-Canada as main French-language broadcaster. The CBC's rights have since been renewed through2024.[3][4]
The most popular entertainment shows on the network are variety shows such asTout le monde en parle[5] andM pour musique, sketch shows likeLes invincibles andEt Dieu créa... Laflaque and dramas such asLes Hauts et les bas de Sophie Paquin,Virginie andTout sur moi.
Tout le monde en parle in particular is a long-running talk show imported from the same show of the same name in France and has featured high-profile guests, such asJulie Couillard and formerAction démocratique du Québec leaderMario Dumont. A weekly music show calledStudio 12 appears on Sundays.
Although the bulk of the prime-time schedule is Quebec-produced, a few dubbed shows from the US have also aired in prime-time, such asPerdus,Beautées désepérées, andChère Betty.
On New Year's Eve, Radio-Canada presentsBye Bye, asketch comedy special satirizing news stories and events from the past year (comparable to theRoyal Canadian Air Farce New Year's Eve specials formerly shown by the English-language CBC Television). In recent years it has become the most-watched program of the year on Quebecois television; the 2021 edition ofBye Bye was the most-watched program in Quebecois television history, and four out of the top five overall were editions ofBye Bye.[6]
Non-news regional programming is usually programmed for broadcast on weekends. It is limited to arts and culture and typically airs outside Quebec, especially inAtlantic Canada andWestern Canada. For example,Zeste broadcasts on stations in Western Canada on Saturday early evenings, whileLuc et Luc airs on Sunday evenings in Atlantic Canada.
Of Canada's three major French-language television networks, Radio-Canada was the only one that, until 2012, broadcast terrestrially in all Canadian provinces. Except forAtlantic Canada, where a single station serves all four provinces, the network has at least one originating station in every province. These stations serve every major market in French and English Canada, with privately ownedaffiliates serving smaller markets in Quebec.
Unlike CBC Television affiliates, which often had several alternative programming sources, Radio-Canada affiliates are effectively constrained to carry network programming throughout the day in a pattern with no preemptions. The only exceptions are for local and regional programming and commercials.
In 2007, Radio-Canada announced its intention to terminate its long-time affiliation with three regional affiliates inSherbrooke,Trois-Rivières, andSaguenay. These stations were owned byCogeco, at the time a majority owner of commercial rival TQS (nowNoovo). By the end of the year, TQS had filed for bankruptcy; as part of exiting bankruptcy, a deal was announced the following spring for Radio-Canada to directly acquire the stations.[8] The transaction was approved by the CRTC on June 26, 2008.[9] Only the stations inRouyn-Noranda (CKRN-DT, which closed in 2018)[10] andRivière-du-Loup (CKRT-DT, which closed in 2021)[11] remained as private affiliates, rather thanowned-and-operated stations.
On February 27, 2009, CBC/Radio-Canada President Hubert Lacroix admitted at theEmpire Club of Canada that the corporation is facing a budget shortfall and as a result some services may be forced to close down and/or stations merged or sold off, saying:
"La crise économique nous force à revoir toutes les facettes de nos activités."
("The economic crisis forced us to review all facets of our activities.")[12]
It is not yet clear how the announcement will affect stations owned by either CBC Television or Télévision de Radio-Canada, however it is envisaged that regional news programming may be merged in the regions outside Quebec.
Radio-Canada once operated an extensive network of rebroadcasters, but they were closed by 2012.
SRC converted its originating station transmitters to digital as part of the digital transition deadline in mandatory markets, which took place on August 31, 2011.
On July 31, 2012, all of the corporation's 620 analogue television transmitters were permanently shut down, leaving CBC's English and French television network with a total of 27 digital transmitters.
For most of its history, the network was branded asRadio-Canada. In television listings such asTV Guide orTV Hebdo, where space limitations usually require television networks to be referred to by a three-letter abbreviation; while its full name was previouslyTélévision de Radio-Canada, the network was normally coded asSRC (for Société Radio-Canada, the French language corporate name of the CBC as a whole). While the network experimented with using SRC as its on-air brand in the 1990s, within a few months it reverted to using "Radio-Canada" for nearly all verbal references. The experiment ended later in the decade. In 2009 Radio-Canada refreshed its branding featuring the word "Télévision" underneath the corporate logo; in promos, it features the logo, without any wording or slogans.
On June 5, 2013, it was announced that as part of an overall effort to unify the CBC's French-language platforms and outlets under a common name, Télévision de Radio-Canada was to be renamedIci Télé on September 9, 2013—a nod to its longtimesystem cue dating back to the 1930s on radio,Ici Radio-Canada (This is Radio-Canada).[13][14][15][16] The re-branding waspanned by critics and politicians, who felt that the new brand was too confusing, and criticized the CBC's plans to downplay the historic "Radio-Canada" name as a viewer-facing brand, along with the reported $400,000 cost of the new campaign in the midst of budget cuts. In response to the criticism, Hubert Lacroix announced a compromise, where the Radio-Canada name would be added to the revised branding, resulting inIci Radio-Canada Télé as its official name.[17][18][19]
Theombudsman of Radio-Canada has beenPierre Champoux since July 2021. He was preceded byGuy Gendron (2016-2021),Pierre Tourangeau (2011-2016).Julie Miville-Dechêne (2007–2011),Renaud Gilbert (2000–2007),Marcel Pépin (1997–1999),Mario Cardinal (1993–1997) andBruno Gauron (1992).
On March 5, 2005, Télévision de Radio-Canada launched anHD simulcast of itsMontreal stationCBFT-DT. Since that time they have also launched HD simulcasts inQuebec City (CBVT-DT),Ottawa (CBOFT-DT),Toronto (CBLFT-DT) andVancouver (CBUFT-DT). The HD feed is available through both pay television services, and throughATSCdigital terrestrial television on the following channels:
On September 10, 2007, the network (as well as sister cable news networkRDI) began broadcasting all programming solely in the16:9aspect ratio with few exceptions, and beganletterboxing its widescreen feed for standard definition viewers.
Certain shows such asVirginie andLe Téléjournal are carried on international francophone channelsTV5Monde.
As withCBC Television, Ici Télé stations can be viewed over-the-air in the northern United States including the border areas of easternMaine viaCBAFT-DT Moncton orCKRT-DT Rivière-du-Loup; northern and central New England viaCKSH-DT Sherbrooke; the border areas ofNew York andVermont viaCBFT-DT Montreal,CBOFT-DT Ottawa-Gatineau orCBLFT-DT Toronto; or in northwestWashington viaCBUFT-DT Vancouver.
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